09 - OCT 03 - CPCM (1) - GMC,CM,AT

Q168 Chairman: Good afternoon, everybody.
This is the third session of the Committee's inquiry into press
standards, privacy and libel. I would like to welcome as our witnesses
this afternoon Gerry McCann, his media spokesman, Clarence Mitchell,
and Adam Tudor of Carter Ruck. Obviously we are going to be focusing
this afternoon specifically on media issues but perhaps I could
just start off by expressing, I think on behalf of all of the
Committee, our sympathy to Gerry McCann for the ordeal that he
and his family have had to undergo and also to express the hope
still that Madeleine might one day be found. Before we come to
questions, I know that you would like to make a short statement.

GMC : Thank
you. I am Gerald McCann, the father of Madeleine, who was abducted
in Praia da Luz on 3 May 2007. Although elements of the media
coverage have undoubtedly been helpful in the ongoing search for
Madeleine, our family has been the focus of some of the most sensationalist,
untruthful, irresponsible and damaging reporting in the history
of the press.(1) If it were not for the love and tremendous support
of our family, friends and the general public, this disgraceful
conduct, particularly in the tragic circumstances in which we
find ourselves, may have resulted in the complete disruption of
our family.

Q169Ch. : Can I ask you to say
a little bit more about your impression of the reporting of the
case and how it changed over time?

GMC :The first impressions
really started on day one when we came back to Praia da Luz having
spent the day in Portimão at the police station. Clearly, there
was a huge media presence there already. My natural instinct was
to appeal for information, for people to come forward. At that
point we were desperate for information and desperate, as we still
are, that our daughter could be found and we wanted people to
help in that. That is why we spoke to the media and did our appeals.
Particularly early on, there was a general willingness of the
media, an engagement and a real desire to try and help get information
leading to Madeleine's whereabouts. Fairly quickly though both
Kate and myself, certainly when we were in the apartment watching
the broadcasting, particularly on the news channels, and subsequently
when we looked at the newspapers, saw that much of the content
of the material, even within the first few days—possibly
particularly in the first few days—was highly speculative.
(2) It was not at all helpful to us and we fairly quickly decided,
for our own benefit, not to watch the broadcasting or indeed to
read the newspapers in detail. Of course the speculation aspects
are still ongoing in many respects until we all know where Madeleine
is and who took her. There were elements as we went along where
clearly we wanted to get the message out there and particularly
the fact that, when it became apparent to us that Madeleine could
quite easily have been transferred out of Portugal quickly, added
a completely different dimension to us as parents and what we
were trying to achieve. As you know, the Spanish border is only
about 90 minutes away and we felt, if Madeleine had been moved
quickly, our chances of finding her with a local investigation
only would be quite slim. (3) Therefore we wanted an international
campaign as much as possible and for people to be aware of her
being missing. We were put in a very difficult situation in that
we are used to coming from a society where there is quite open
engagement between law enforcement and the public in terms of
high profile crimes, compared to the circumstances that we found
ourselves in, in Portugal, where as a rule there is not any open
dialogue between law enforcement and the public. That was difficult,
particularly when we were being fed and researching the experience
from North America where in cases of missing children there is
a very strong belief that the public can help. (4) There was undoubtedly
a desire to help. As the weeks went on, particularly after we
had finished our trips to countries (5) where we felt there was potentially
relevant information that may be got for the investigation, by
staying on in Portugal we were surprised that the media interest
did not die down, to be quite frank. We saw pressure, particularly
on journalists, to produce stories when really there was not anything
new to report. Probably that was the point where things became
what I would call irrelevancies or half truths or suggestions
were making front page news.

Q170Ch. : Your impression was
that the newspapers wanted to go on reporting stories about Madeleine's
disappearance and, if there were no new facts to report, they
started to resort to making up things?

GMC :I totally agree with
that. Prior to becoming involved in this experience, I always
believed that, although there might be quite marked exaggeration
to some front page headline stories, I never really believed that
many of them could be absolutely blatantly made up. I believe
that was the case with Madeleine.

Q171Ch. : Did you feel that
once that point had been reached the majority of press coverage
then become negative and unhelpful to you or were there specific
worst offenders?

GMC : Obviously there were
fictitious stories which were not necessarily libellous or defamatory
(6) and clearly there was another turn when we were declared arguido
and it was a free for all really. A different process went on
before that which was largely where Madeleine, I believe, was
made a commodity and profits were to be made. As far as I could
see, having front page news stories or indeed any stories in newspapers
on a daily basis was not helpful to the search. There was that
element, but that was not particularly damaging at that point
other than that there was a lot of misinformation and we would
have been spending all of our time if we were trying to correct
it. (7) There was something very early on which I was uneasy with
and that was in terms of the confidentiality of the investigation,
whether it be in this country or in a foreign country. I think
there is information related to a crime that you do not want to
be made public because only the witnesses who were there will
know that information. It concerned me greatly that elements of
the time line were becoming increasingly apparent through leaks
and a desire to have every single bit of information known; whereas
at the time I remember speaking to Kate and her other friends
and saying, "In some ways, judicial secrecy is good because
the abductor will not be able to get access to information that
only we know."(8) That was pretty quickly eroded and was disappointing.
That is very different to the senior investigating officer, as
would happen in a serious case in this country, providing information
to the public to try and get further intelligence. That aspect
of it was concerning even quite early on.

Q172Ch. : Do you believe that
in the majority of cases the negative stories that appeared were
completely fabricated or were there some people in the police
who might have given them information which led them to write
the stories they did?

GMC : Do you mean the stories
arising in Portugal?

Q173 Ch. : Yes.

GMC : The worst stories that
were printed in this country were based on articles that had been
directly published within Portugal. (9) Often what we found was that
they had been embellished and a single line that was very deep
in an article within a Portuguese newspaper, usually from an unsourced
source, was front page and exaggerated to the extent where we
had ridiculous headlines and stories. I think the most damning
thing of all of this and the most damaging aspect of all the coverage
which Kate and I cannot forgive is the presentation that there
is a substantial body of evidence that suggests that Madeleine
is dead when there is no evidence in fact to suggest she has been
seriously harmed. (10)

Q174Adrian Sanders (MP Liberal Democrat) : Are you saying that
the media impeded your campaigning and the search for Madeleine?

GMC : I have made it clear
that elements of the media were helpful in terms of the campaign.
In terms of distribution of her image, it is incredibly powerful.
There is absolutely no doubt about that. Subsequently the media
were used by CEOP in terms of an appeal asking for tourists to
come forward and there was a huge number of photographs uplifted
and other information given. Elements of the appeal nature and
awareness are there and are helpful but if you portray a missing
child as dead and people believe she is dead without due evidence
then people stop looking. (11)

Q175 AS : Did you feel the
need to appoint media help to raise awareness through the press
or did you feel the need to do that to deal with unwanted media
attention?

GMC : There are two elements.
Right at the very beginning, Mark Warner had a media specialist,
a crisis management specialist from Bell Pottinger called Alex
Wilful (Sic, en fait Woolfall), who was incredibly helpful to us and, in those early days,
gave us quite simple guidance which we found particularly helpful.
It was very much along the lines of: what are your objectives?
What are you hoping to achieve by speaking to the media? Be very
clear about what you want. That was very, very good because there
is an element that they are there on your doorstep. Having never
been exposed to media in any substantial amount previously, you
are not quite sure where the boundaries are and what is expected.
Having that protection and guidance in terms of dealing with it
was very important. The Government sent out a media adviser who
had expertise in campaign management, Cherie Dodd, who previously
worked at the DTI and started talking about planning for us, how
we could utilise the media in terms of achieving objectives and
then subsequently Clarence came out. That was very important,
one, to assist us in trying to get information to help find our
missing daughter and, secondly, in protecting us from the media
because the demands were unbelievable. To be thrust from being
on holiday one minute into the middle of an international media
storm and knowing how to cope with that is very difficult. What
we wanted and still want is a partnership with the media when
we have information which we think may be relevant and can assist
the search, (12) obviously drawing the lines between the search for
Madeleine and the Kate and Gerry Show, which the media were much
more interested as most of the facts came out. Drawing the line
between those two things was much harder.

Q176AS : It seems to prove
almost impossible when you have that level of media attention
to control it. It just becomes an uncontrollable vortex.

GMC : Obviously the circumstances
around this story are fairly unique but we were never under the
impression that we were controlling the media. We did not set
the media agenda.

Q177AS : I do not think you
gave that impression.

GMC : For the record, I have
to be categorically clear about this. The media decide what they
publish and what they broadcast. Obviously we were asking for
help and we got a lot of exposure and, even early on, unwanted
exposure. It was more about influencing the content and being
clear about when we were engaging about what we were hoping to
get out of it.(13)

Q178 Adam Price (MP Plaid Cymru) : You mentioned a
moment ago the pressures that you felt some journalists were facing
in terms of having to deliver stories 24/7. Did any of the journalists
that you would have met on a face to face basis ever express any
sense of regret or remorse at some of the stories that they were
printing or were they fairly brazen?

GMC : At the time the most
damaging stories were published, we were not really speaking to
many journalists face to face. Kate and I, despite the coverage,
particularly after the first five weeks or so, have been in front
of the media very periodically. Very rarely have we come face
to face with a journalist whose name was by the byline or the
story. We have had Clarence with us during most of this so he
has dealt with it more. I know that Clarence has had apologies
from journalists and there has been, "I wrote this but the
headline was done by the news desk." There is clearly pressure
on the journalists on the ground who are being funded on expenses
and are under pressure to produce copy. There is pressure from
the news desk to write a headline which does not necessarily reflect
the factual content available for the story.

Clarence Mitchell (PR de GMC) : Gerry is absolutely
right. The reporters on the ground were only doing their job.
We are not critical of them in that sense, but they were under
intense pressure from their news desks and within themselves as
well. We had a pack—this is just UK press I am talking about—of
UK reporters based in Praia da Luz who were looking at the front
page that day. We also had another, smaller pack in Leicestershire
trying to talk to relatives and people back here who knew Kate
and Gerry at that end. We also had columnists writing legal pieces
and all of them were competing on a daily basis to get their version
of the story into the paper. I sometimes had the most ridiculous
situation where I had reporters coming to me saying, "I have
got to get a front page splash out of this by four o'clock this
afternoon or my job is on the line." If I said, "Well,
sorry, we do not have anything substantially new today" or
the authorities either in Portugal or Britain did not want us
to say anything, they would say, "We are going to have to
write it anyway." They were apologetic in that sense but
as a former journalist myself I understood the pressures they
were under. Later in the evening I would get calls from Leicestershire
or the London news desks saying, "We have got a better angle
from the UK on this. What do you think about that?" It was
like a one story news room in itself generating all these different
pressures and, regardless of what we would say or do, sure enough
the story would be on the front page the next day anyway. We had
anecdotal evidence as well that was putting on massive sales for
certain titles and that was undoubtedly one of the reasons why
Madeleine stayed on the front page as long as she did, although
there were lots of other factors within the story that, in pure
journalistic parlance, made it a big story and kept that momentum
going. We were credited with keeping that momentum going. A lot
of the time we were not doing anything. It was the media feeding
on it itself.

Q179 Nigel Evans (MP Conservative) : Do you think you got
better treatment from the television news than you did from the
printed press?

GMC : By and large the broadcasters
have been more responsible. I would not say they have been without
fault, particularly around the arguido time. There are elements
that were too accepting of information that was becoming available
from sources and we still are not sure where they are. Whether
the coverage was all entirely appropriate I am not the best person
to decide because obviously we are biased.

Q180 NE : At any time was any
journalist in a face to face with you—although you just
said that was rather contained—abusive to either you or
Kate?

GMC : Not so much directly.
I did speak to Christopher Meyer about this in the summer of 2007. (14)
"Reverence" is the wrong word but amongst the UK press
there did seem to be an empathy and they did not want, at least
initially, to unduly upset. That wore off fairly quickly but generally
I felt we were treated quite well. When we came back from the
police station on the first night and I saw the press pack and
the frenzy there, I had the most horrible visions of complete
intrusion, invasion of privacy, and in those first days and weeks
while we stayed on the Ocean Club complex there was an order about
it. We agreed that we did not mind being filmed going about our
normal activity but we were not going to be engaging in giving
stories on a day to day basis. That seemed to work quite well.
Both sides seemed to be quite happy. What we envisaged was that
demand would rapidly tail off which it never quite did really
and that certainly took me by surprise.

Q181 NE : Did any of them have
your mobile numbers for instance and phone you at odd times or
pester you all the time?

GMC : I have to say it was
remarkably few. My mobile number was known to a proportion of
the journalists. The vast majority called through the media liaison,
whether it be Bell Pottinger with Alex Wilful (Sic à nouveau au lieu de Woolfall) first of all or
Clarence and his predecessors. I had a few calls. One of them
was phoning to say, "I think what is happening right now
is getting out of hand and you need to try and do something."
It was advice as much as tapping us up. That happened on one or
two occasions and we just directed it back to the media.

CM : One of the problems
was on the ground. Because of judicial secrecy and the police
not being able or willing to say anything publicly, certainly
the British journalists and the Americans to a certain extent
had come to expect a very open attitude from the authorities and,
when they did not get that, they had nowhere to fall back on.
(15) They were not able to do any real investigative digging of their
own or they did not seem particularly inclined to. As a practical
illustration of that, they tended to congregate at one particular
bar which had a pretty lethal combination of free Wi-Fi and alcohol
and that became the news room for the duration of the trip, I
am afraid. They would get the Portuguese press each morning translated
for them with mistranslations occasionally occurring in that as
well. Then, no matter what rubbish, frankly, was appearing in
the Portuguese press from whatever source, they would then come
to me and I would either deny it or try and correct it or say,
"We are just not talking about this today." That was
effectively a balancing of the story and there was no further
effort to pursue any independent journalism as we might recognise
it.

Q182 NE : Are you suggesting
that some of the stuff that we read in the newspapers was fuelled
by alcohol?

CM : I am not suggesting
anything was written in that particular state. I am just trying
to illustrate the point that it was a convivial atmosphere. The
journalists found it easy to work there and I had to go down to
brief them there. Broadcasters tend to hunt in a different pack
from print, so I would have to go down to where the broadcasters
were and talk to them for the day on any agreed messages that
I had agreed with Kate and Gerry. Then the print press would have
different agendas and different deadlines and they tended to congregate
at the bar. I am not saying that in a pejorative sense. I am just
illustrating that as an example of where they were, but that is
what they had to do because they had no other traditional sources
that would normally be available to them. Frankly, because of
that, they did not really push any further.

Q183 NE : I want to touch on
the distinction, when the information that the media managed to
get one way or another was useful and when it was not, which is
the suggestion almost that information that could only be made
available to the police—only the police would know it and
yourselves—somehow got out into the media world. Do you
believe therefore that this information was directly leaked to
certain newspapers? Is there any suggestion—Clarence, maybe
this is one for you—that any British journalists were paying
the police for information that they later used which went against
your best interests?

CM : I have no proof of
that. I cannot prove where any of the leaks came from but you
only have to look at the nature of the stories and the content
within them to make certain presumptions. (16) My situation was dealing
with those leaks once they appeared. Something that was even often
just a suggestion or an allegation, unsourced in the Portuguese
press, by the time it found its way across the Channel, had become
hardened up into fact with an extra scare headline or whatever
on top of it. That is where the real problems started because
these things would end up in the cuttings file and would become
an accepted fact in the story when in fact they were complete
distortions in many cases or entirely untrue in others.

Q184 NE : In those instances
where the information was true, was the source originally Portuguese
newspaper and then transferred after translation into British
papers or did now and again some stuff that only the police and
yourselves knew get into British newspapers first?

GMC : As far as I could see,
almost all of the information available had arisen within Portugal
first. Without knowing the intricate dealings of what happens
around the police station and what is on and off the record, clearly
someone else within Portugal has been quoted as saying that judicial
secrecy is a bit like the speeding law. Everyone knows there is
a law but no one sticks to it. (17) It was not me who said it but there
is that element. There is a cultural difference and obviously
we do not speak the language. With hindsight, we only really started
paying attention more to the Portuguese press when we realised
what was happening. I know in your submissions there are a lot
of elements about the digitisation of media and also the globalisation
of it. Clearly, this is a very strong example of where you have
media very quickly feeding off each other and the day after it
would be front page headlines and in the UK press there would
be a front page headline of what was a tiny little story. There
was this positive reinforcement: The Times of London has
carried it; that means it is true. That was quoted on more than
one occasion.

CM : We would see things
appearing in the Portuguese press get misreported in Britain and
get misreported again back in Portugal. It was just this circle
of lunacy at times.

Adam Tudor (avocat de GMC) : In order to be sure
about that you would have to do a line by line comparison of all
of the Portuguese articles and all of the UK articles. We do not
know the answer directly but I am pretty sure that the overwhelming
majority of the allegations that appeared here had been sourced
from the Portuguese media, first and foremost, rather than direct
sources. (18)

Q185 Paul Farrelly (MP Labour) : I want to move
to the PCC but before that I want to establish what the legal
situation of the reporting was in Portugal. Irrespective of press
standards and libel, when a potential criminal investigation is
run in the UK there are laws of contempt. The Portuguese police
leaking(19) is clearly reprehensible but they are not the only police
force to do it. When it came to the case of the care home in Jersey
recently, it went to a different level where police were making
statements that could be reported with impunity but the press
was not sceptical about them. We do not have this arguido category
here. Often we have people helping the police with their inquiries.
In Portugal were both the UK and the Portuguese press in any way
breaking Portuguese laws of contempt in any of the reporting?
This is perhaps one for Mr Tudor.

AT : I would not bank on
it. I am not a Portuguese lawyer and I am not a criminal lawyer.
I do not know is the short answer. So far as I am aware, there
was no intervention by the Portuguese authorities along the lines
of contempt in the way that you might expect to have seen here.

GMC : This is my first hand
knowledge from discussions rather than knowledge of Portuguese
law but clearly within Portugal there has been a balance going
on between laws, many of which date back to them being a Fascist
government (20) and subsequently a Communist one. Freedom of speech
is perhaps more freely enshrined there and yet we have this judicial
secrecy which, in many cases, does not function the way it should.
There is this element where the press there is potentially much
less well regulated, to use that in the loosest context, than
it is in the UK. (21) I believe in terms of the legal situation, if
a police officer gave information which was known to be on the
file and only on the file relevant to it then technically I believe
that is probably correct.

Q186PF : Have you ever
speculated as to how this might have developed had Madeleine disappeared
in Britain and what the difference might have been in the press
reporting?

GMC : Speaking to law enforcement
over here and in the US, obviously in Portugal and other organisations
involved in child welfare and missing children, usually, certainly
within this country, the senior investigating officer and the
police force responsible have a media strategy. They give information
which they want out there and that takes away the vacuum to some
extent. In many countries that is the way it works. (22)

Q187PF : Have you had
any sense from talking to law enforcement officers here that,
had the media started on the trail that they followed leading
to the completely made up and damaging stories, the police here
might have stepped in and warned the media to calm it down?

AT : Or the Attorney General
even, yes. I have always taken the view from a non-criminal, legal
perspective that if this "incident" had happened here
there is no way you would have had this nature of coverage. It
would have been substantially different and the newspapers would
have been considerably more careful. Incidentally, even though
this did take place in Portugal, it is important that you know
if you did not know already that at the very least in October
2007 Leicestershire Police (23) did indeed issue a missive to the media
asking them to be a bit more careful about how they were going
about this. Even though it was overseas, the nature of the reporting
was obviously an issue which as I understand it was of concern
to Leicestershire Police as well.

Q188 PF : This brings us
neatly to press standards. There has been criticism of the Press
Complaints Commission that they were not proactive. They stood
by and did not invoke their own inquiry. They have said in evidence
to us, defending that position, that to have done so would have
been an impertinence to the McCanns. Would you have felt it an
impertinence to you had the Press Complaints Commission in respect
of press standards been more proactive and said, "Hold on,
this is not the way a responsible press behaves"?

GMC : No, I would not have
found it impertinent. I certainly would have been open to dialogue
if it was felt to be within the remit of the PCC. Having also
read their evidence, they are claiming it is not within their
remit. Aspects with the PCC have been helpful in terms of protecting
privacy particularly for our twins, which was a major concern
for us. They were continuing to be photographed and we wanted
that stopped. Very quickly that was taken up by the press and
broadcasters within the UK. We are thankful for that. There was
also help in removing photographers from outside our drive after
what we felt was a very over long period, when news had really
gone quite quiet and we were still being subjected to camera lenses
up against our car with the twins in the back, which was inappropriate.
In terms of the defamatory and libellous stories, clearly the
advice from both the PCC and our legal advisers was that the PCC
was not the route.

Q189PF : You have described
some of the interaction you had with the PCC. Did you consider
making an official complaint to the PCC that they were publishing
stories about you on the basis of no evidence at all and indeed
about Mr Murat as well whose life was also destroyed?GMC : In terms of the defamatory
stories on that specific point, we were advised that legal redress
was the way to address that issue.

Q190PF : You were advised
by the PCC?

GMC : I had an informal conversation
that was directed to me, yes.

Q191 PF : Can you tell
us who you had the conversation with?

GMC : It was with the then
chairman, Sir Christopher Meyer.

Q192PF : There was no
willingness to take up the issues around you therefore as a matter
of press standards?

GMC : At the time and on
reading their submission, they say it is a very clear division
between libel, for which there is legal redress, and when we spoke
to Adam for Carter Ruck he also strongly advised us that if we
wanted a stop put to it then legal redress was the way to go.

Q193PF : There are wider
issues: your personal safety and the ability to try and find your
daughter. It was much wider than libel behaviour. (24)

GMC : Absolutely. From Kate's
and my point of view, taking the legal route was a last resort.
You are right. I think there is a gap there currently in the regulation.
A complaint for example about stories which are about an invasion
of privacy is always retrospective and the damage has often been
done. There has to be some degree of control, I believe, or deterrent
to publishing untrue and particularly damaging stories where they
have the potential to ruin people's lives.

Q194PF : The fact that
newspaper editors, including The Daily Express Editor,
Peter Hill, were on the board of the PCC at the time—what
sort of view did that leave with you as to how the Press Complaints
Commission operates?

GMC : It did cause me concern.
We were in a dispute with them. Although ultimately they thankfully
decided to settle before taking it on to court, they did not just
roll over and say, "Oh, sorry." There was quite a bit
of correspondence and we had to produce quite a bit of evidence.
I did think it was surprising that an editor of a paper which
had so flagrantly libelled us with the most devastating stories
could hold a position on the board of the PCC. (25)

Q195PF : The newspaper
industry of course is adamant that self-regulation works. I would
be interested in your view of that but furthermore it has been
remarked that in any other sphere of life, in any other profession,
in business or in government, if something like this had happened
there would have been an inquiry. Somebody, somewhere, would have
launched an inquiry. We are mounting an inquiry here but we are
not part of the media profession. What does th e failure of any
inquiry or any toughening of a code because of what you have been
through say about not only the standards of the press in this
country in your view but also the role of the regulator in upholding
these standards of the media?

GMC : Obviously speaking
from our own experience, we have probably been the most high profile
case or extreme case there has been. I think we do see almost
on a daily basis information published that is damaging, possibly
untruthful and defamatory to people. My own view is that there
has to be some more stringent regulation of that. I will very
much defend freedom of speech but when people's lives are put
in jeopardy by different mechanisms there has to be redress. (26)

AT : We had a conversation
about the PCC when Kate and Gerry first came to Carter Ruck. It
was quite a short conversation. The PCC is perceived, to a considerable
extent still correctly, as being wholly media friendly. It lacks
teeth. It cannot award damages. It cannot force apologies. As
soon as there is any dispute of fact between the newspaper and
the victim of the libel, the PCC backs off and says, "This
needs to go to law." To be fair to the PCC, I think they
have accepted and said that the McCanns' case was never going
to be appropriate for the PCC but should have gone to law and
so on. How one views the PCC in this kind of scenario, extreme
or otherwise, is that it can be summed up by the fact that if
you were to ask me how I think The Express would have reacted
if Kate and Gerry McCann had brought a PCC complaint rather than
a Carter Ruck letter, you could probably have felt the sigh of
relief all the way down Fleet Street. Perhaps that gives you a
feel for how it would be perceived. First of all, I am afraid
it would have led The Express to think that relatively
speaking they were off the hook because of the lack of teeth that
the PCC has. Secondly, almost by definition, by going to the PCC
Kate and Gerry would have been tacitly sending out a signal, not
only to The Express, but to the rest of Fleet Street that
they had no appetite to see this through and therefore perhaps
could be fobbed off, as it were. Time and again one comes across
this being the reality of PCC complaints. I am not here to put
the boot into the PCC. I think they have a very important role
to perform. From my experience indirectly of how the McCanns have
dealt with the PCC in relation to the children, harassment and
so on, it certainly has a role to perform, but it is not the sort
of role it is cut out for because of the inherent contradictions
of self-regulation.(27)

CM : On the practical
aspects of dealing with the press, they were a very substantial
help. Kate and Gerry had photographers outside their driveway
for six months, every day, after they came from Portugal. It was
on the basis that We need a today picture, which
was exactly identical to the one six months before. Utter nonsense.
When the PCC made representations formally and at the right levels,
that presence dissipated very quickly. They were a substantial
help on certain practical aspects, but we all knew and the PCC
themselves knew that, given the gravity of the defamations that
were occurring and the sheer volume and scale of it and the unique
nature of this particular situation, really the legal route was
then the only option. With self-regulation, I echo Gerry. Free
speech in a democracy has to stand. Of course it does. With the
changing media landscape now, in the new multi-connected, multi-layered,
multi-platform world we live in, self-regulation is an issue the
press need to address themselves in terms of improving it and
widening it. The whole aspect of the social networking that occurs
now, the readers' comments, their own websites—many newspaper
groups are now almost broadcasters in their own right and look
like that when you walk into the news room. I am not sure personally
whether self-regulation is keeping up with that advance in technology.
It is something that they really will need to address in the coming
months and years. It has been said that information travels these
days beyond the speed of thought and I think that does happen
more and more frequently. If the press do not keep their own house
in order, they may run the risk of some other regulatory body
coming in.

Q196 Janet Anderson (MP Labour) : Would it be
fair to say to all three of you that there is an important, valuable
role for the PCC to play but it is very limited? There is a gap
in all of this that needs filling. You said, Gerry, that some
of this irresponsible media coverage has the potential to ruin
people's lives and that is exactly what it can and does do. You
also made the point—Max Mosley in front of us this morning
made a similar point—about, once this has happened, the
damage has been done. I wanted to ask you two things really. To
what extent were you given advance warning of the kinds of stories
that were going to appear? When you talk about the need for more
stringent regulation, would you favour a privacy law of the kind
that exists in other countries? Do you think the press would be
more responsible if we had that?

GMC : In terms of privacy,
I was certainly concerned about privacy but I do not think in
general we had gross violation of our privacy. We had irritant
elements of it but generally I feel it was respected. Any views
I have on privacy are therefore very personal and I do not think
I should be giving them in front of this Committee as having a
specific experience. In terms of advance notice, I would often
hear Clarence on the phone to journalists expressly telling them
that the information they had was rubbish. It would not stop it
being published.

Q197 JA : It would still
be published?

GMC : Yes.

CM : We expected it to
be published after a while. We just knew it was coming. Normally,
we had a few hours' notice.

GMC : We were talking about
this again this morning. We possibly could have forgiven the furore
around the arguido status at that time. Clearly that is going
to be newsworthy, but when it became abundantly clear to newspapers
that there was not any evidence to back up any allegations then
they were warned. We wrote to them. Two newspapers, The Express
and The London Evening Standard, were put on express notice
that the stories they were running were defamatory. The editors
were all visited personally by our spokesperson, Clarence, and
Justine McGuinness before that, with a criminal lawyer, who told
them that there was no evidence. It did not stop. It was the rehashing
and this ad infinitum aspect that they could reproduce
headlines at will that had no substance that forced us to take
action. (28)

Q198 JA : The PCC was
absolutely no help in that at all?

GMC : It was again never
offered in any way. Secondly, in the discussions, we were advised
that they were not the correct vehicle for such complaints. (29)

AT : One can only speculate
about what was going on in that regard. The PCC in many respects,
certainly when it comes to libel, is a passive body rather than
a proactive body. That is just a fact, rightly or wrongly. If,
let us say in another world, the PCC had decided to get involved
in Kate and Gerry's predicament at a relatively early stage and
contacted for example the Editor or the journalists at The
Express and any other newspapers that were reporting this
stuff, tried to warn them off and said they understood that there
was a danger that this could be a breach of the factual accuracy
provisions in the PCC code, for example, I anticipate that the
answer to the PCC would have been, "Well, these stories have
all been well sourced. We are standing by our sources. It is a
story of the most colossal public interest. Therefore, we are
carrying on." The result would have been they would have
carried on publishing. You would have ended up exactly back at
square one. I am not saying there should be but there would have
been no interventionist power on the part of the PCC to wade in
and say, "You cannot publish that. You cannot publish this.
You have to redraft that so it does not say this." That is
obviously not what they do and probably not what they are there
for. That would have been the reality of that kind of situation.

CM : When I visited Peter
Hill with Angus McBride from Kingsley Napley, it was really an
informal discussion to say, "Look, this is beginning to get
out of hand. Can we rein it back in before it becomes necessary
to take any action?" There was an acceptance by him on that
day that "some of their headlines had overstepped the mark"
and that they would be more cognisant of that in the future. For
a week or two things did get better but I am afraid there was
the competition and the urge for the front page. Off we went again
and it led to the complaint that was lodged.

Q199Ch. : The PCC has told us
that on 5 May, two days after Madeleine's disappearance, they
contacted the British Embassy to remind them that the PCC's jurisdiction
extended to journalists working overseas and also to suggest that
the embassy pass on the PCC's details to you. Did that happen
and did you then have any contact with the PCC?

GMC : If it did, it certainly
was lost in the furore of the other information I was bombarded
with at the time. I was not aware of that until I read the submission.

Q200 Alan Keen (MP Labour): Did you get the impression
a lot of the time that the headlines were selling newspapers and
the stuff following the articles was disconnected with the headline?
Was the content as well as much rubbish as the headlines that
were put out to sell the papers?

GMC :On many occasions,
yes. I can only assume that the stories were being published on
a commercial decision. (30)

Q201 AK : Have you tried to
calculate roughly how much profit The Express made after
deducting their costs?

GMC : I have no idea.

CM : I heard from reporters
on the ground that it was putting on upwards of 40,000 or 50,000
copies a day when Madeleine was on the front page. I have no way
of knowing whether that figure is accurate but it certainly was
putting on tens of thousands of paper sales at the height of it
on a daily basis.

Q202AK : In the same way as
the photographs of Princess Di have appeared by the hundred.

CM : The Express Group,
for whatever reasons, (31) decided that Madeleine was a front page
story come what may in the same way that they had treated the
princess for the previous decade many times. We could only but
draw the conclusion that there was a commercial imperative at
work here.

Q203AK : Has anyone tried
to calculate the profit from this to The Express alone?
Has any other newspaper criticised The Express? Have there
been any articles saying that The Express went too far?

AT : As one would expect,
the usual broadsheets from memory ran some articles on it, the
Guardian being the classic example. It has a good media
section that tends to run a lot of articles commenting on other
things. It has the Roy Greenslade blog and all that sort of thing.
There was an element of coverage but of course the results against
the Express, the front page apologies, the damages and
so on, prompted a huge amount of coverage, not so much in the
printed media perhaps unsurprisingly but certainly in the broadcast
media, which was of course one of the reasons for having it in
terms of the vindication that the McCanns were seeking and indeed
the deterrent for that matter. If I may turn to your question,
Mr Keen, yes, the headlines in many cases were appalling. I do
not know if you have had the misfortune of having read them. A
large number of them were appalling. A large number of them were
on the front page. Almost all of them were big. Obviously they
all appeared online as well. Leaving aside the legal aspects of
how much an ordinary reader is assumed to have read the whole
of the article, the House of Lords decided some time ago that
the ordinary reader is assumed perhaps artificially to have read
the whole article. In this case, I think we complained against
The Express. I think there were about 110 articles. So
far as I am concerned, every single one of those articles themselves,
including the headlines, were actionable, very serious libels
in their own right.

Q204AK : Should there be a
law to ensure that headlines do not exaggerate what is in the
body of the article? It was so bad in your case that it is hardly
relevant even but it is something that happens on a daily basis
in the press. Should there not be a law to ensure that the headline
does not imply more than is in the actual article?

AT : It can be a big problem
with websites even more so because they often have just the opening
line plus the headline and you have to click on something to go
over the whole article. From a legal perspective, you would probably
expect me to say this but, yes, I think there is a lot to be said.
If you go into a filling station or a newsagent and read the headline
about Kate and Gerry McCann, you do not bother to buy the newspaper.
You just absorb the headline and the subhead and go about your
every day business without spending the money and reading the
whole of the article. The assumption that people read the whole
article is completely artificial. In practical terms, I would
love the law to move in that direction but I would be surprised
if it were ever to happen because of the practical difficulties.

Q205AK : Would you like us
to recommend that?

AT : Yes. I think there is
a huge amount to be said for it. To be fair to the newspapers,
I do anticipate that it would lead to difficulties. Sometimes,
to be fair, the headline by definition has to be attention grabbing
within the realms of reasonableness.

GMC : Your point is well
made. It does not just apply to newspapers. If you watch any news
channel, some of the banner strips that run there, often we would
see headlines directly relating to ourselves and say, "That
is not what was said." If you just looked at that banner,
you would believe it was the case. The way we live our lives now,
people are pulsing in and out and that will be the message they
take away. Regarding the point of law, I defer to Adam, but clearly
there is the potential for misinformation to be implied from headlines.

CM : Speaking as a former
journalist, privacy law per se is going down a road that
I know journalism and the media will directly oppose as an infringement
on the right to speak freely. They would argue that they operate
within the law as it currently stands. They did not in Kate and
Gerry's case. That is why they paid the penalty they did. We have
never asked for anything beyond free, fair and accurate reporting.
When it overstepped that mark, that is why Adam and his colleagues
assisted Kate and Gerry in the way they did. I notice in the NUJ
submission they talk about a conscience clause. If a journalist
feels they are being asked to write something, be it a headline
or the copy, that they know to be demonstrably untrue or distorting,
they should be able within their own terms of employment to object
to that. That might be some sort of half way house but the concept
of self-regulation is potentially under threat given the massive
expansion of the media we have now seen. If the media do not police
it themselves, they could well find that this sort of debate is
increasing and the calls for a privacy law become louder.

Q206AK : I asked earlier had
anybody done a calculation as to what profit The Express
made after the expense that you incurred. We all want freedom
of expression but would it not be good for the public to be able
to see what profit The Express made on that, just using
The Express as one firm example? Would it not be good to
know how many papers they sold and how much profit they made?

GMC : If you can command
that information, I would like to see it.

CM : It is quantifiable,
I suppose, if you know the accurate figure for sales against cover
price but that is not where they make most of the money. It is
through the advertising anyway. It was definitely put on sales.

Q207AK : It is not impossible
to look at the advertising as well. That comes from numbers of
copies sold. We are representing the public. We are not against
the press. We agree with freedom of the press but it is our job
to try to get the balance right. We are representing our constituents
and it is an information age we are in. Would it not be good to
get that information from the press so we can all see it?

GMC : The one point I take
from that is that, if we are relying on tabloid newspapers to
present us with news and fact, then they should not be unduly
influenced by profit. Clearly in our case I think they have been
heavily influenced by profit. I can see no other reason for the
way the stories were covered on such a consistent basis. I would
be very interested to know what an economist within the newspaper
industry could work out as a figure. It disturbed me to know that
The Express sold out on the day the apologies were published.

Q208AK : I believe the owner
of The Express is closely tied in with what is put into
the newspapers but if you take the press in general do you think
the owners, the people who collect the profit at the end—it
might be a holding company or a conglomerate which has broadcasting,
news printing and all sorts—the people on that top board
who are at arm's length all the time from the newspapers that
are printed should somehow have to carry some responsibility rather
than staying at arm's length and letting it be handled by the
editors and the lawyers so that people higher up should not be
able to escape? I gave the analogy this morning of corporate manslaughter.
If a company is guilty of bad practices and causes danger to their
employees or to the public—I am not a lawyer—but the
company can be guilty of corporate manslaughter. Are owners of
the groups, particularly of the print media, able to escape from
any sort of liability other than the financial costs like the
ones you have incurred?

AT : I am primarily a claimant
libel lawyer but I am a huge fan of newspapers. I think they perform
an extremely valuable role in our society. I love reading them
but, at the end of the day, they are commercial entities. I make
no criticism of that. It is good to have a healthy, competitive
newspaper market. The thing that hurts them, that makes them stop
and think about whether they should be publishing serious libels
or seriously infringing people's privacy, I am afraid to say somewhat
cynically, is two things, not necessarily in this order. Firstly,
how much it is going to cost them if they get caught out and if
they get the story wrong. Secondly, to be fair to the newspapers,
of course there is an element of professional pride in journalists,
editors and so on and we have to assume that that is the bedrock
of journalism in this country because, if it is not, heaven help
us, frankly. The main stick to ensure that this kind of thing
does not happen again—that is, other far less serious, far
less voluminous, but nevertheless still very serious for the victims—is
financial. You have the theoretical possibility of having a statutory
fines framework put into place. Personally, I am not a fan of
that. I would be very surprised if it was ever to happen. The
other stick, as we know, I suppose, is the potential humiliation
of losing a libel or privacy action plus the damages they have
to pay out which vindicate and compensate the victim of the libel
or the breach of privacy. The jurisdiction, as I am sure you know,
does exist within the civil court to award punitive damages, exemplary
damages, in certain circumstances but those circumstances are
very, very limited. The reason exemplary damages exist and the
philosophy behind them very much reflects your point, Mr Keen.
If you can see that a decision has been made to publish an article
regardless of its truth in order to make more money out of sales
that day, then perhaps the law should allow that to then be reflected
in the damages. At the moment, the circumstances in which exemplary
damages are awarded are very, very limited. I think it has been
held that they cannot be awarded in privacy cases. They are available
in libel cases but only very rarely. I take the view that Kate
and Gerry's case was a classic one where punitive damages, exemplary
damages, may well have been awarded if it had gone to court, in
which case it may well have been that the judge would have thrown
the book at Express Newspapers, but even then these things are
never open and shut because you have to establish a state of mind,
recklessness as to the truth or otherwise and so on. It is far
from straightforward in terms of bringing a real, financial deterrent
for publishers.

Q209AK : Are you saying that,
as with the banking system, self-regulation particularly in the
print media must come to an end? Self-regulation has not worked,
has it?

AT : I am not sure it was
ever intended to work in the kind of scenario we are talking about
in terms of libel. I am not sure it works in terms of general
privacy in the Max Mosley sense. I know Mr Mosley thinks there
is a great deal to be said for having an obligation to pre-notify
somebody before you publish something about their private life
and I have considerable sympathy for that. There is a place for
self-regulation but to suggest, as I think some media organisations
do, that it is working perfectly, we do not need to worry and
we do not need to bother the courts with more and more cases I
think is simply not the case.

Q210Ch. : You reached a settlement
with Associated Newspapers and with News International in the
form of the News of the World, but you decided to go to
court against The Daily Express. Was that because you could
not reach a settlement or was it because you decided that The
Daily Express was so serious that you wanted to see them in
court?

GMC : We complained against
the Express Group first because they were the most serious and
the worst. We came to an agreement with them and there was an
open statement in court in front of Mr Justice Eady. It did not
actually go to trial.

Q211Ch. : Mr Tudor, we have
heard from other members of your firm a week ago about your firm
quite often operating on a CFA. You have said in your view it
is quite clear that there was serious defamation so you were very
confident clearly that you would win this case. Did you consider
a CFA(Condition Fee Agreement) ?

AT : Yes. My partners and
I talked about it. We have a committee of partners that looks
at whether or not a case is on a no win, no fee basis, as you
probably heard from my partner, Mark Thompson. We did that with
Kate and Gerry's case. It was a longer, more difficult discussion
than would ordinarily be the case because of the extraordinary
nature, volume and so on. We sent the complaints to The Express
and The Star, at which point we were acting on a normal
retainer. We indicated to Kate and Gerry and we told The Express
and The Star at that time that if the matter was not resolved
we would indeed go on to a no win, no fee arrangement.

GMC : If there was not the
facility for a conditional fee arrangement (32), it is very unlikely
we would have continued with the action on the basis that this
was not our main purpose. We are still looking for Madeleine.
Much of our energies are diverted in that but also the prospect
of a fairly swift, conclusive verdict along with taking away most
of the risk—essentially, we would have had to remortgage
our house to do that. It had a huge bearing and I am thankful
to Carter Ruck for taking us on.

Q212 Mike Hall (MP Labour) : You went to some extraordinary
lengths I think to avoid having to take any legal action in this
case. You really did go to the newspapers and point out to them
that a lot of what they were reporting was factually incorrect
or just pure fabrication. That clearly did not work with one group
of newspapers. What was the final story that drove you to take
legal action?

GMC : We had done as much
as we thought we could. There was a period where it seemed to
go pretty quiet. After that, there was a short lull. In January
2008, we had the same headlines rehashed, the same stories with
the same incredibly disturbing content. At that point we said,
"Enough is enough. This cannot continue." It was a last
resort. We did not want to get into an adversarial process with
the media in general but we felt it had to be done. With hindsight,
we probably should have done it earlier because it led to a dramatic
change in the coverage.

Q213 MH : You chose one specific
group of newspapers to take legal action against. Was that because
they were the only serial offender, if you like, or was it just
because the sheer nature of their reporting set them aside from
all the other media reports?

GMC : Undoubtedly, we could
have sued all the newspaper groups. I feel fairly confident about
that but that was not what we were interested in. We were interested
in putting a stop to it first and foremost and looking for some
redress primarily with an apology. The Express was the
worst offender by some distance. After the quiet period, The
Express rehashed it and it was a very easy decision as to
which group of newspapers to issue the complaint against.

Q214MH : Was the standard of
the reporting in The Express significantly worse than the
other newspapers, of a lower standard? I have no experience of
this. I do not know how you managed to get the translations from
the Portuguese newspapers. How did it compare with the reports
in the Portuguese newspapers?

GMC : Kate and I really did
stop reading the newspapers very, very quickly. Unfortunately,
many of our family and friends did not. Just to emphasise again
how disturbing it was for us, often if we were going to bed, putting
on the television and you had the newspapers being shown on the
news last thing at night, to see a front page headline that you
knew to be rubbish and, worse, insinuating that you were involved
in your own daughter's death or disappearance was incredibly,
unbelievably upsetting. Often, it was feedback through us or through
our media person. What we did do though, for the reasons I outlined
earlier, around July/August 2007, we had an offer from a Portuguese
lady who said she could translate the Portuguese press for us
on a daily basis. She did that and then it became very apparent
to us the way the news cycle was happening. I want to make this
absolutely clear: we could see that often what was a throw away
line at the bottom of a Portuguese tabloid, along the lines of
"Somebody said this", the next thing was fact in a headline
and greatly embellished, rehashing much of the article but often
in much stronger terms than had been originally reported. (33)

Q215MH : You said that your
intention for the libel action was to stop factually incorrect,
fictitious, fabricated stories appearing in the press.

GMC : Yes. Again, I make
this absolutely clear: our primary motive was we felt these were
damaging the search. If people believed Madeleine was dead or
that we were involved in her disappearance, then people would
not look, would not come forward. That was our absolute, primary
objective by taking action. (34)

Q216MH : What is your assessment
of the success of that action?

GMC : I think it has been
incredibly successful. There was an overnight change in the reporting
and what would be carried. I think Kate particularly wants me
to say this: we would much rather that none of these stories had
been published in the manner that they were and we would rather
not have had to take action, because I cannot say that the damage
that was done has been reversed. I hope it has but I cannot say
that it has. We will not know until we find Madeleine and who
took her.

CM : All it could have
taken is one person who had information, who reads some of that
and says, "It must not have been anything" and the call
never comes through. It could all still hinge on one call.

GMC : When people are presented
with information on almost a daily basis insinuating something,
even if it is on rather fragile ground, there is not always the
reasoning and rationale behind it and the objectives of why that
information is in the public domain in the first place are not
always scrutinised.

Q217MH : Other than the financial
penalty that the newspaper group suffered in having to settle
the action, do you think they have suffered any other serious
consequences for the misreporting in this case, because they clearly
have damaged the case to find Madeleine. That I think goes beyond
any shadow of a doubt. (35) Do you think there should have been other
consequences apart from the financial damages that they had to
pay?

GMC : I do not know if the
Express Group stated exactly what action they have taken and who
they have held accountable and responsible for that. You could
apply that to the others. We should make that public. All of us
would expect in our walks of life, in the jobs that we do, that
when you get something so badly wrong so often, with potentially
serious consequences, someone should be held to account. There
has been a financial payment. I have no idea whether that has
seriously damaged Express Newspapers or not.

Q218 PF : There have been
scores of libellous articles over months and months and no one
has been sacked, demoted or reprimanded. Robert Murat was quoted
at the weekend as telling Cambridge University that a British
journalist (36) covering this was so anxious to break the story that
she created it. "She tried to convince the Portuguese Police
that I was acting suspiciously"; yet nobody has paid any
penalty. What does that say about the press?

CM : It may be instructive
to know that when the complaint first went in the initial response
from the Express Group was to offer the chance to set everything
right in an exclusive interview with OK Magazine, which
is owned by Mr Desmond as well. You do not have to think too long
and hard about our response to that offer.

Q219 AS : It says in The
Express's apology that they "promise to do all in their
power to help efforts to find her". Have they done anything
in their power since that apology to help you?

CM : I think our silence
speaks volumes.

Q220 AP : You described the
process of embellishment whereby an originally inaccurate story
in the Portuguese press then became magnified in the British press.
Did you ever feel it necessary to take any legal action against
any of the Portuguese newspapers for some of those original sources
of inaccurate information?

GMC : We have of course considered
it. In August 2007, we did issue proceedings against the Tal
e Qual newspaper and that organisation has subsequently gone
bust. An indicator of it is that is still going through the process
of the courts. It is very unlikely that we will follow it up but
we have chosen at this time not to take action in Portugal, primarily
because we have been advised that it would be a very long and
drawn-out process. It would distract our energies in a direction
which is not the main aspect of what we are trying to achieve
in the search for Madeleine. Additionally, we think it would have
a negative impact by rehashing the same information over and over
again and adding what we saw in some of the jingoistic elements
of the reporting an Anglo-Portuguese battle, which is not what
this is about. We want to work with the Portuguese in the search
and although we cannot and will not rule it out in future, for
the time being we have decided to try and get on with doing what
we think everyone should be doing, and focusing on Madeleine and
not on what has been said in the past.

Q221 AP : In that sense at
least you think that the British system of libel law is more expeditious?

GMC : Absolutely, and I know
that the PCC in their submission have said that their process
is fast, free and it is solved in a non-adversarial way, but that
is not the advice that we were getting with regards our specific
complaints. In some ways I have been very thankful that we have
been able to put a stop to the reporting, the way it was going,
and fairly quickly, and without a huge amount of time. Obviously
we weighed up issuing the complaint very carefully and we felt
that we were pushed into a corner, but in terms of our own time,
how much Kate and I had to spend on it was really small in comparison
with the amount of other activity that we are involved in with
the on-going search.

AT : Just on that point,
and as a follow-up to Mr Farrelly's point as well, which is what
does this say about British journalism and newspapers and so on,
I am not going to comment on that in any detail other than to
say that one of the themes that has come out of many of the submissions
that you have had from the media for the purposes of today, and
to some extent from the PCC as well, is this notion that the McCann
phenomenon in libel terms and press terms was indeed just that,
a phenomenon, and you cannot compare it with anything, it is not
a model for where we are with press standards, and so on and so
forth, and that is a real theme. That is Fleet Street's out, if
you like, in this debate. This case was clearly unprecedented
to some extent. I know Kelvin Mackenzie says he thinks that the
"Madeleine story" was the biggest of his career, and
whether or not that is right, I do not know. Either way—and
Gerry would probably amplify this—I think that all this
case has done in libel terms is magnify what I think is endemic
anyway in terms of the pressure on journalists to deliver stories,
the lack the sufficiently rigorous fact-checking and so on and
so forth, and filling vacuums of news on the 24-hour news cycle.
I do not think it is right to say there is no lesson to learn
from this. I do not think that is right at all.

GMC : I may just add one
thing to that and it is that we know that journalists have always
had deadlines and pressures, but it is quite apparent to me from
reading several of the submissions that they are threatened by
the change in the media, and where new media meets old they are
competing, and what Clarence when he came on board told me about
his rigorous fact-checking when he started as a journalist a few
years ago, we have not seen evidence of that. They were prepared
to do it. One other thing that I think is very important in regards
to how this story was covered is that the media, particularly
the press, became so obsessed with getting there first that Kate
and I feel that on a number of occasions Madeleine's safety was
completely disregarded. There were sightings and other information
would have been followed up and there was no consideration to
Kate's and my feelings, hurt or our wider family about anything
that was printed. What we saw in the first few days very quickly
evaporated.

Q222 Rosemary McKenna (MP Labour) : It just must
have been incredibly invasive and so difficult. In the time since
Madeleine disappeared and all the issues surrounding your case,
are there any general lessons that you think the press should
learn?

GMC : What all of us are
asking for here is responsible reporting. Maybe it is too much
to ask to go back to responsible journalism, fact-checking and
checking of sources. I think it is too easy where new media meets
old to pick up a slur on the internet and "here is my copy
for today". It is lazy and it is dangerous and I think personally
if I felt there was some way of regulating it, and I know it is
incredibly complex, then I would like to see responsible reporting.
A huge amount of the National Union of Journalists submission
is very balanced, but I think in the commercial world, with the
pressures, it is not going to happen. I think for me it is about
responsibility and reporting truth and not making innuendo and
speculation appear as fact.

Q223 RMK : I wonder how
some of them can live with themselves. Finally, what level of
media coverage would be useful to you now? Is there anything that
can be done that the media itself, the journalists themselves
could do now to help in your search for Madeleine?

GMC : Our search is on-going
and it is very much the way we can get the information to as many
people as possible. We do not know how many people, first of all,
may have information that might be relevant, who may or may not
have come forward already. Clearly what we have been doing within
the Find Madeleine team is to review the information available
to us, and to look for areas where there are deficiencies, and
to target where we think we want key information, and of course
then if we think it is appropriate, and I have to say this has
largely been left to ourselves throughout to identify these things,
and continues to be left to the family and those who are working
for us, then we will come and we will ask the media because we
know we can reach people. If we think there is something they
can help in then we will come to the media and ask for that help.
I would ask if the media really have something which they think
is potentially helpful then they come to us and ask whether we
think it is helpful, or the police if they want.

CM : Every time I get
an interview bid—and I still get them on a daily basis—Kate
and Gerry turn round to me and say, "How is this going to
help the search for Madeleine?" and, frankly, 98% of the
time I have to say it is not. It is going to give them a good
headline and it is interesting, but is it actually going to have
a tangible, beneficial result; the answer is no. There are obvious
points such as anniversaries and birthdays where the interest
will come back again, legitimately we could argue. We had the
nonsense where we had the 30-day anniversary, the 50-day anniversary,
the 100-day anniversary, fatuous things like that. However, when
there are legitimate anniversaries, God forbid that it goes on
that long, Kate and Gerry may well choose to do some interviews,
and we will choose which are the most effective and refine what
messages there are from the search side, from the investigative
side, that will hopefully yield that piece of information. That
is when we will re-engage with the media. We are very grateful
to them, Kate and Gerry are very grateful to them for their continued
interest on that basis.

GMC : It is quite difficult
in terms of the calendars on the news desks because clearly they
do mark dates on the calendar and they think, "Okay, we will
come back to this story." The pressure mounts to give something.
Of course, we do want people to know the search is on-going. It
is and we are never going to give up; we cannot give up, but it
is very much if we have something, then we will try to coincide
that with what will be a natural increase in the media interest
anyway.

Q224 PF : As MPs we get
abusive letters and emails all the time; that is freedom of expression.
People write hostile news stories but these days they invite comment
on news stories on-line. On New Year's Eve, a friend of mine lost
his son who was 16-years-old in a tragic accident. There was a
factual report in the local newspaper but some of the comments
that the newspaper allowed on the story were obscene and sick,
and it is a disgrace that they allowed them to be printed there.
What was your experience was with the so-called on-line world,
in particular how newspapers did or did not moderate comments
that they invited on stories about Madeleine?

CM : I am not going to
dignify some of the on-line comment or sites or forums that are
out there around this particular case. A lot of what they say
is, as you say, quite rightly, entirely disgusting and, nor, as
I say, will I dignify it with any real comment. Where we see deeply
offensive nonsense like that, inaccurate, libellous statements
appearing, it has got to the stage where I will not even tell
Kate and Gerry about it; it is pointless. I let Adam know and
if it is a mainstream media outlet that is allowing this publication
to occur, normally a call from Carter Ruck pointing out the legal
problems they are facing with such comment sitting there will
normally suffice to get it either retracted or taken off. That
is not in any way trying to stop free speech. Expression of free
speech within the law of the land is absolutely fine, but when
it oversteps the mark, and I know exactly what you mean about
that other tragedy, you just wonder about human nature, where
is the compassion, and where is the heart in any of these people
that they can say these things freely.

Q225 PF : With respect
to newspaper sites you should not have to do this, should you,
they should moderate themselves?

AT : That is a moot point.
In my experience, what happens, and I echo everything that Clarence
has just said, with a slight exception, I remember at a fairly
early stage of my retainment we wrote to a newspaper in respect
of readers' obscene comments attached to several of the articles
that that newspaper website was running, and we got the response
back that said that they were not going to do anything to interfere
with their readers' Article 10 rights to freedom of expression,
which is ludicrous obviously given what these emails were saying.
We upped the ante somewhat and it is fair to say that they then
came down very, very quickly. Only last week we had a situation
with a newspaper where we had to get stuff down. By and large,
newspapers are quite responsible about it, not necessarily through
any altruism but because as soon as they are on reasonable notice
of it they become legally liable. One of the ways they try to
protect themselves from the very point that you raise, Mr Farrelly,
is that they deliberately say, as I understand it, and I will
be corrected if I am wrong, that they are not moderating it because
if they are not moderating it they are not responsible for it.
Personally I think that is a rather unattractive way of looking
at things. If they are going to host websites and allow people
to put whatever comments they want on their websites, they should
monitor them properly and spot libels and serious infringements
of people's privacy or whatever and take them down themselves.
It should not be necessarily incumbent on the victims of those
libels or infringements to get in touch with them and get it taken
down. That begs another question about the extent to which newspapers
can be encouraged or forced to moderate.

Q226 PF : They would be
in breach of what the PCC tells us is the Code position. One final
question on electronic media. Since we have taken up the inquiry
I have noticed that because our emails are public we are getting
people who really should get a life coming to us with obscene
stuff. We do not respond to it because it just encourages them,
so we just delete it, but that begs the concern where this stuff
is egged on and people have taken this up because they are quite
sick, in large part because of the tenor of the newspaper coverage,
to what extent are you plagued by this now and to what extent
have there been fears for your personal safety?

GMC : I think in general
we have had a substantial amount of abusive mail. There have been
one or two incidents around the house in which the police have
been involved. Generally it is not such an issue, but clearly
we have concerns for our own and our children's safety, and that
should be borne in mind. I think in terms of electronic media,
clearly some people have got too much time on their hands. I stopped
reading any comments, much like most of the information on the
internet regarding Madeleine, very, very early on. When the media
said to us at the beginning about this being a campaign, it was
a word that I really did not like. Actually I have realised why
it is a campaign; it is because we have got one objective and
we are trying to achieve it and other people are trying to derail
us from our objective, and there is a war of attrition at times.
I feel very sorry for those people who feel the need to do that.
There is clearly something missing in their lives.

CM : I think the internet
can give a spurious credibility to some of these views. A lot
of these people have their own self-serving agendas based entirely
on prejudice and inaccuracy and a churning of inaccuracy upon
inaccuracy leading to this false horizon that they believe in
themselves. We choose to ignore them because they are utterly
irrelevant.Ch. : Thank you. We have no more
questions. Can I thank all three of you for coming this afternoon
and in particular, Gerry, we greatly appreciate your willingness
to come and talk to us, thank you.

(The current level of activity, you know, I think you're absolutely
right, there is a huge amount of innuendo which is being presented in
various ways, suggesting that there may be evidence or facts behind it
and there are none, and our opinion of what happened that night has not
changed. We know certain facts, unfortunately because of the criminal
investigation, we can't divulge them, and I want to make it absolutely
clear, the reasons why we're not divulging the information; we will not
make it easier for the perpetrator to cover their tracks. The police
have all the information and we have bared our soul to them, and we'll
continue to assist them in any way possible, but, you know, we have to
keep silent. And, in fact, one of the slight positives in... in all of
this is that there is so much rumour about what did and didn't happen,
it's actually very difficult, if you're reading the newspapers, watching
TV, to know what is true and what's not").(36) Lori C, du Sunday Mirror, dénonça effectivement Robert M. auprès du LC, car il lui rappelait Ian Huntley (Soham murders). Rien que ça !